23 JANUARY 1915, Page 24

The collection of popular tales is a hobby which is

both pleasant for those who exercise it and entertaining to the rest of the world. We owe gratitude to Mr. H. Parker, late of the Ceylon Irrigation Department, for having put his leisure and his intimate knowledge of native dialects to such good use. He now publishes the second and third volumes of his exhaustive collection of the Village Folk Tales of Ceylon (Luzac and Co., 12s. a it each). The first volume, containing seventy-five stories, was issued in 1910; this new instalment brings up the number to two hundred and sixty-six. Mr. Parker has translated these stories with great fidelity to the childlike nature of the originals, and has added learned notes dealing with parallels from other collections of Indian folk- lore.